New York, New York It's A Weird (and Wonderful) Place
The Sunday Age
Sunday May 19, 2002
My family moved to New York in February, so we have been here about nine weeks. There are four of us: myself and my husband, and our two-year-old twins.
I really wanted to be here and so far, we feel lucky to live in New York. I wonder though if we, as Australians, say things that are peculiar to Americans. Certainly they say things that are peculiar and wonderful to me.
Here are some examples. We flew to Manhattan via California, because we wanted to break up the journey for the children.
Bored and badly jet-lagged we wandered out to a park near the hotel, where I saw a woman with a dog sitting on a bench. I took my daughter Chloe by the hand, and went over.
"Hello," I said to the woman on the bench.
"Do you mind if my daughter pats your dog?"
She looked up in apparent surprise.
"I don't know," she said. "You'll have to ask him. Sometimes he doesn't like it."
We moved on to Manhattan and one of the first things I noticed was how many twins there were, so many, in fact, that I decided to write a story about it. While doing the research, I came across the Manhattan Mother of Twins Club.
I immediately joined, but also asked if anybody wanted to be interviewed for the story I intended to do. Quite a few mothers were kind enough to agree so, on a sunny day a few weeks ago, I made my away around to the home of one of them.
We got along really well. Like me, she has a boy and a girl. I told her I had joined the Mother of Twins Club, and that I was looking forward to having some mums come around to my apartment, so their kids could play with mine.
"You'll have to make a playdate," she said, and then told me what one was. It's a peculiar thing: if your children want to play with some other kids from the neighbourhood, you have to organise it through their parents. You make a time that is agreeable, and you stay for a length of time that is set in advance. It's an efficient way to organise your day but I feel wistful for the Australian habit of just "dropping over" to see if the neighbors are in.
"So, like, you don't ring beforehand?" the American mother said to me, while deftly shifting one baby from bunny rug to breast, and back again.
"Not always," I said. "Sometimes you just wander over with your kids, put your head through the door and say, is anyone home? And if they are, they invite you in and make you a cup of tea."
She thought about this for a minute, then said: "So, like, do you have to keep a clean house the whole time?"
Another thing about having twins is that you cannot go anywhere without a stroller.
We have a double jogging stroller with two big wheels at the back and small one stuck out in front. It is supposed to be easy to manoeuvre but actually it is too big to do almost anything useful, except strolling through Central Park.
It was because of this stroller that I chose a local bank with a ramp. Otherwise, I can't get up the stairs and in the door to access our money (of which you need an awful lot). Just yesterday, I'd run out again so I forced the children into the jogger (they were screaming and arching their backs, the way two-year-olds do) and ventured out.
It was pouring rain and, maybe because it was Friday, there were lots of people coming in and out. We waited in the rain for them to make their way down the ramp, and then, just as I was about to start pushing the kids up, an old woman shoved past me, and pushed in front. This happens in Australia, too: some people are kind and some are not, and nationality has nothing to do with it.
Still, it had been a long day and the children were crying and I was so mad, I rammed the front wheel of the pram into the back of her heels as we went up behind her. It probably hurt.
She was furious and, when we got inside the bank, she turned and spoke sharply to me: "You know, you really ought to watch where you are going."
I don't know what came over me, but I snapped right back: "You know what? You really ought to shut your fat face."
She was shocked. She took her cheeks into the fingers of one hand and squeezed them, so her lips pursed outwards. I thought she was going to cry. Instead, with wide eyes, she implored me: "You think my face looks fat?"
Caroline Overington is New York correspondent for The Age. Her column will appear monthly.
© 2002 The Sunday Age
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